Marilyn's Mystery Reads

The police asking a burglar to help them out?  This could only happen in Los Angeles.

Junior Bender is the burglar, and he has developed a following among his fellow crooks for solving their problems.  But it’s a surprise when Police Detective Paulie DiGaudio asks Junior for help.  Paulie’s uncle, Vinnie DiGaudio, was a big name in the early days of rock and roll and the producer of “American Dance Hall,” a television show in the 1950s featuring Philadelphia teenagers dancing to hit rock and roll records.

Rather than relying on others, Vinnie became, on a small level, a star-maker.  He found local teenage boys who reminded him of Elvis, wrote songs for them, and watched them become teen-age phenoms, if only for a brief time. During this time, Vinnie created two stars.  One was Bobby Angel, a kid who could sing; the other was Georgio, a drop-dead gorgeous boy who couldn’t sing a note but didn’t need to.

Although Junior tells Paulie that he doesn’t get involved in murder cases, of course that’s the reason Paulie has called him.  Vinnie was heard to say publicly that he’d like to kill Derek Bigelow, a trashy reporter who was trying to blackmail him.  Derek is found dead shortly thereafter and Vinnie, although swearing his innocence, looks good for the crime.  The strange thing is, Junior discovers, Vinnie has a solid alibi for the night of the murder but for some reason is afraid to use it.  What could he be more afraid of than facing a murder charge?

Although he’s supposed to be spending all his time investigating the DiGaudio case, Junior is also looking for the missing daughter of the owner of the motel where he lives.  Doris is the woman who has disappeared, apparently with her no-good boyfriend, and her mother won’t call the police.

Doris’ mother, Mildred, tells Junior that Doris hates cops because her father was a cop unfairly accused of killing a man and was forced off the force without a pension.  “So I send cops after her, she’ll smell them coming from a mile away. It’s you or nobody.  She’d never let a cop find her…,” Mildred explains.   So Junior, being the mensch that Mildred calls him, agrees to look for Doris.

With all the above there’s a lot going on in Junior’s life, but there’s even more.  Sparks fly when he meets Ronnie Bigelow, the widow of the late, unlamented (even by Ronnie) reporter who was blackmailing Vinnie; their attraction is instant and obvious.  And Junior is also dealing with his precocious thirteen-year-old daughter Rina, her schoolmate/possible boyfriend Tyrone, and some feelings he still has for his ex-wife Kathy.  And a former gangster, now an elderly man but still someone with mucho power in Los Angeles, wants to be kept abreast of Junior’s investigations into Vinnie’s innocence or guilt.

Little Elvises is a book that will make you laugh out loud but has a serious undertone.  It looks into the sleazy underworld behind the music industry and the desire for fame and fortune that can cause the most horrific crimes. Its characters are a bit over-the-top, but their motivations are real and understandable, even the worst of them.  Timothy Hallinan has written a book that’s a delight to read.

You can read more about Timothy Hallinan at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

June 10, 2013

Writing after death–good idea or bad?

In The Boston Globe on May 12, there was a fascinating article by Zac Bissonnette entitled “Robert B. Parker is Dead. Long Live Robert B. Parker!” It may seem a strange headline to the non-mystery reader, but to those of us familiar with Parker’s works and his death in January 2010, it makes complete sense.

Robert B. Parker was the author of nearly seventy novels, many of them in the Spenser series. His family, particularly his wife Joan, was faced with the question that has faced the families of other writers in the crime genre. Should a series, or perhaps more than one series, be ended with the author’s death, or should another writer be found to continue it?

Obviously, this is a decision that each family must make for itself. There are arguments on both sides. Readers of a popular series are reluctant to “let go” of their favorites, and they may be ready to accept another author’s similar, if not identical, version of the protagonist and the people with whom he surrounded himself. Other readers are perhaps more loyal to the author than to his creation; they don’t want anyone else’s fingerprints on the characters that the deceased developed, even if those fingerprints are barely detectable.

According to his widow, Parker never discussed his wishes regarding whether or not someone else should continue writing about his three protagonists: Spenser, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone. It apparently was hard for Parker to discuss his mortality, even though at age 77 it should have been obvious that his writing life was considerably closer to its end than its beginning. But, says Joan Parker, “He was convinced he’d live to be 100. So that was not in the scheme of things at all.”

Speaking only for myself, I vote to let the characters go quietly. I agree with the estate of the late, great John D. MacDonald, author of the Travis McGee series. “It is because I have never seen a really good imitation, be it art, literature, or music, that carries that poignant echo of the original artist,” MacDonald’s son Maynard has said. Travis McGee died with his creator, which is one way of handling the situation.

Another is for the author to write a novel in which the character dies. Agatha Christie did this very successfully with Hercule Poirot, so much so that Poirot became the first and only fictional figure to have a front-page obituary in The New York Times. Although Ms. Christie wrote Poirot’s final book in the 1940s with the plan of having it appear after she died, she changed her mind and Curtain was published in 1975, a year before her own death.

Tired of writing about his popular hero, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle threw Sherlock Holmes to his (apparent) death over the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. “I must save my mind for better things,” Doyle wrote to his mother, “even if it means I must bury my pocketbook with him.” But, as we all know, the public refused to accept Holmes’ death, and the author was forced to bring him back.

So apparently there is no perfect answer to the question of whether the character should live after the author’s death.  And although I read Ace Atkins’ novel Lullaby and enjoyed it, I would have preferred to have Spenser disappear when Parker died. As the New Testament has it, let the dead bury the dead. Amen.

Marilyn

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“Fabulous” was the word I said out loud when I closed Buried on Avenue B, and I truly meant it.  This is one outstanding mystery.

Paulette Williams comes to Manhattan South to report a possible murder that may have taken place seventeen years ago.  Darlene O’Hara is a detective in Manhattan South, or Manhattan Soft as it’s called because of its low murder rate.  Paulette is a home health aide, and she tells Darlene that her patient, Gus Henderson, confessed to killing a man and burying him in a garden plot on Avenue B.  Gus is elderly and has dementia, Paulette warns, and has since retracted his confession, but she feel strongly enough about it to come to the police.  She also knows, she says, the exact location of the body because Gus had pointed it out.

While visiting Gus and getting the same denial about the murder that his aide had gotten, Darlene is shown his box of keepsakes.  In it is a photo of a willow tree in the garden.  So after getting permission to take the photo with her, Darlene gets approval from her supervisor to assembles a team and start digging to uncover what is buried.  “You’ve got six hours,” he warns her, and that would seem to be enough to uncover the body of the large black man that Gus previously had admitted to stabbing to death.  But what is revealed by the city’s forensic anthropologist is very different–the remains of a white child, a young John Doe.

Darlene’s search to find the identity of the boy takes her from her Manhattan home to Sarasota, Florida and then part-way up the eastern seaboard in the company of Connie Warwrinka, a detective on the Sarasota force.  What brings them together is the fact that the NYPD got a ballistics match on the bullet that killed the still-unknown and unclaimed body in Manhattan.  That bullet matched one in Sarasota that had been used to kill an eighty-seven-year-old widower there.  There doesn’t seem to be any logical connection, but stranger things have happened.

There’s a lot going on in Buried on Avenue B and a large cast of characters, but the storyline is clear and the characters are wonderfully drawn.  Darlene, who became an unmarried mother at fifteen, now has a son who has just dropped out of college to lead a rock band.  She had named him Alex Rose, and perhaps that’s what caused the change in his career path.  At the garden, Darlene meets Christina Malmstromer, who tends her small plot of tomatoes, basil, and eggplant, and her father, Lars, who secretly makes miniature furniture in the hope that someday Christina will give him a grandchild.

Investigating the murder of Ben Levin in Florida, Darlene meets his childhood friend Sol Klinger and Ben’s downstairs neighbor, ninety-year-old Sharon Di Nunzio, who had a romantic/sexual relationship with the deceased.  And that list of characters doesn’t even touch some of the most interesting ones in Manhattan.  It’s an amazing group of people, all of whom come across as real people, not simply figures put on the pages of a book.

Buried on Avenue B is a terrific mystery, one that has an ending that took me totally by surprise.  It’s a winner in every sense.

You can read more about Peter De Jonge at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

What a sad, sad story about dysfunctional lives in pre-World War II London.  What a terrific read.

Hangover Square takes place in a seedy area in the down-at-the-heels Earl Court district of the city.  George Harvey Bone is a twenty-something man with mental illness, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say mental illnesses.  He suffers from schizophrenia, alcoholism, and an obsession which manifests itself only when he is in his schizophrenic state.  During his non-schizophrenic time, George is both fascinated and repelled by Netta Longdon.  During his schizophrenic episodes, his all-consuming desire is to kill her.

In his normal state, George is utterly besotted by Netta.  When he sees her the day after Christmas, he is struck again by her looks.  “Although she was not made up, untidy and not trying,” she bewitches him “with…unholy beauty….”  In his functional state, his wish is to marry Netta and have children with her; in his schizophrenic state, he plots to kill her.  In each state, he has no memory of the other one.

Netta is the leader of a small group of extremely unpleasant people.  She is a wanna-be film actress but is unwilling to put any effort into learning her craft.  Actually, it’s not so much that she wants to act, she wants the money and glory that would come with being in that profession.  But, being too lazy to improve her skills, she hasn’t gotten any further than a couple of small movie roles.

In many ways, the relationship between George and Netta is similar to that between Phillip Carey and Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage.  In each novel there is a sad, lonely man who falls in love with a sadistic and uncaring woman.  Both Netta and Mildred use George and Phillip, respectively, only for monetary reasons.  They show no warmth, feeling, or compassion for these men, only scorn and distain for the way the men allowed themselves to be treated.

Hangover Square is a hard read.  One goes back and forth in George’s disturbed mind, and both of his states are hard to deal with.  When he appears normal, his obsession with Netta allows her to treat him dreadfully, and although he sometimes recognizes this, he is so enthralled by her he is unable to break the cord that binds them.   When he’s in his schizophrenic state and plotting murder, it’s equally hard to read.

Hangover Square is considered Patrick Hamilton’s finest novel.  He also was a poet and the author of two successful plays:  Rope, which was made into an Alfred Hitchcock film starring Jimmy Stewart, and Gaslight, later to become a movie starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.

You can read more about Patrick Hamilton at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Early on in D. A. Mishani’s debut novel, A Missing File, police detective Avraham Avraham (no typographical error) is talking to the mother of fourteen-year-old Ofer who, she says, didn’t come home from school that day.

“Do you know why there are no detective novels in Hebrew?” Avraham asks Hannah Sharabi.  He mentions Agatha Christie’s books and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  “Because we don’t have crimes like that,” he answers his own question.   “He’ll be home in an hour…maybe tomorrow morning at the latest.  I can assure you.”  But Avraham is a bit too sure, too smug; Ofer doesn’t come home later that day or the next.

Avraham Avraham is a thirty-eight-year-old detective in a quiet suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel.  Children or teenagers never disappear from Holon.  Though Ofer hasn’t come home by the following morning or contacted his mother, Avraham is still not overly concerned.   However, he does institute a police search of the apartment house where the boy lives with his mother and two younger siblings.  His father, an engineer on a ship, lives with the family when he’s in port, although he travels frequently.

However, by the afternoon of the following day, Avraham admits to having second thoughts.  He’s beginning to worry that he hasn’t been professional, that he was too eager to dismiss Ofer’s mother’s visit to police headquarters.  And now, although the police search finally has begun in earnest, there still aren’t any significant clues to the young man’s whereabouts.

Ze’ev Avni is a neighbor of Ofer’s family.  He appears to have an unusual interest in the police proceedings, rather than in the boy’s actual disappearance.  A high school teacher, Ze’ev tells the police that he had been approached several months earlier by the family to tutor Ofer in English.  According to Ze’ev, the tutoring had gone well and he and his pupil had begun to develop a sort of friendship when suddenly the boy’s mother told Ze’ev that Ofer wanted to stop his English lessons and get tutored in math and science instead.  But Ze’ev is convinced that that isn’t true, that for some reason the boy’s parents were actually the ones who wanted the lessons stopped.

Throughout the novel, Avraham is tormented by feelings that he didn’t pay sufficient attention to the missing boy’s mother.  When the time comes for him to go to Brussels for a long-planned vacation he doesn’t want to leave the investigation, but he is forced to go by his friend and mentor in the department.  However, by the end of the novel, Avraham and the reader realize that this trip has been a life-changing event for him.

Mishani’s detective is a lonely soul.  He celebrates his thirty-eighth birthday during the investigation into the teenager’s disappearance, and it’s a sad occasion.  He seems to have no life outside his work.  When Marianka, the woman he meets through a friend while visiting Brussels, asks him what he does when he’s not a policeman, he answers, “I’m a policeman then too.”

Steven Cohen has provided a wonderful translation of this novel from the Hebrew.

D. A. Mishani is a literary scholar and teaches courses on the history of detective literature.  His first novel is a character study as well as a mystery, and both parts mesh perfectly.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Some authors can write a great mystery series but can’t write a good stand-alone.  Conversely, some authors write terrific stand-alones but can’t sustain a character or characters for multiple books.  Happily, Linda Barnes writes a wonderful series (Carlotta Carlisle) and has just shown that she can write an outstanding stand-alone, The Perfect Ghost.

Em Moore is a graduate student in English and was supposed to co-author, as a ghost writer, an authorized autobiography of Garrett Malcolm, an actor and Oscar-winning director.  But her plan seems to have fallen apart upon the death of her colleague, professor, and lover Teddy Blake, who was killed in a one-car accident on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, right in the middle of conducting multiple interviews for the book. 

Now it’s up to Em, quiet, self-conscious, and insecure to the point of being phobic, to convince their publisher that she’s able to finish the interviews, write the book on her own, and do the necessary publicity afterward to ensure that it becomes a best-seller.  She’s told that if Garrett agrees, she can continue the research and write the book as the sole ghostwriter.

Em heads down from Boston to Cape Cod to interview the handsome, charming, and charismatic Garrett.  Surprising herself yet again, she manages to convince Garrett to continue with the book, albeit with the provisos that he can withdraw his permission at any time and that he has total control over the book’s content.

It doesn’t take too long before Em is swept up by Garrett and, astonishingly, he appears to be equally captivated by her.  She moves into his mansion on the Cape, ostensibly to learn more about him but in actuality to make it easier to continue their whirlwind sexual relationship.

Although Garrett has a well-deserved reputation as a womanizer, he did have a loving relationship with his late wife, the actress Claire Gregory.  Garrett is the third generation of theatrical Malcolms and Claire was a brilliant actress, so it’s not surprising that their only child, Jenna, is an actress.  Em would love to interview Jenna for the book, but she’s out of the country, as she has been for years, touring in England and Australia.

So for now, Em has to make due with Garrett; his cousin James Foley, a former actor currently selling real estate; and Brooklyn Pierce, the sexy actor who starred in three of Garrett’s early films but now is an alcoholic hoping for a comeback.

The Perfect Ghost is told in the first person by Em, through taped interviews Teddy conducted that are now in Em’s possession, and in the official reports written by the detective investigating Teddy’s accident.

Through Em’s narration we can see the changes she undergoes as she becomes more sure of herself and her abilities, and we learn more about her relationship with Teddy.  “Listening” to Teddy’s  tapes with Garrett and various people in his life, we understand more about the actor and his background.  And reading the letters of Detective Russell Snow to his chief of police we are able to follow his investigation into Teddy’s death.

Linda Barnes has once again written an excellent book, with characters who are believable and a plot that, I promise, will keep you in suspense until the very last page. 

You can read more about Linda Barnes at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Many people, myself included, think of the Amish as a people far removed from life as we know it today.  They don’t use electricity, ride in motorized vehicles, play popular music, or continue their education past the eighth grade.  But, however much they don’t want an un-Amish way of life, they cannot protect themselves from the outside world completely.  Amish or not, human nature is human nature.

Gone Missing is the fourth novel in the Kate Burkholder series.  Kate is the chief of police of Painters Mills, a small Ohio community that includes a number of Amish families as well as the “Englischers,” which is what the Amish call all those who are non-Amish.  The Amish try to avoid outsiders as much as possible, particularly those in the police and the legal system, in order to keep to their own way of life.  So it’s a bit surprising to Kate when she gets a call from John Tomasetti, an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, asking for her help with the case of a missing teenager.  Kate says that missing persons cases are not her area of expertise, but John responds, “It is when they’re Amish.”  Born Amish and fluent in the Pennsylvania Dutch tongue that the community speaks, Kate is the go-to person when followers of that religion are involved.

It turns out that there are four teenage Amish girls who are missing, not just one.  Each has gone outside the strict confines of the church–dating non-Amish boys, dressing in non-Amish ways, listening to non-church music.  Each has had problems with her family, but all the parents stress that their daughters are good girls who would never willingly leave home.  So where could they be?

Kate Buckholder understands only too well the temptations these girls face.  She, too, was a wild child who left home at eighteen to become a policewoman, alienating her from her parents and siblings.  But now it is Kate’s sister Sarah who asks for her help, because one of the missing girls, Sadie Miller, is Sarah’s niece.

Several local men are persons of interest, as the police say.  Justin Treece, a teenage boy, is the Englischer boyfriend of one of the girls; he recently spent time in juvenile detention for assaulting his mother.  Stacy Karns is a prize-winning photographer; his most famous photos are of teenage Amish girls who were unknowingly photographed in various stages of undress.  And there’s Gideon Stolzfus, formerly Amish and now the pastor of his own church, who runs a kind of Underground Railroad to help unhappy teenagers leave the Amish way.

Linda Castillo paints a moving, sympathetic portrait of a tight-knit community that wants only to be left alone to keep its ways without the Englischers intruding.  But have the temptations of that world been too much for the teenagers?  Have they been led into danger, perhaps fatally?

Gone Missing is an intriguing portrait of Ohio’s Amish and English communities, living side by side in an uneasy peace.  Linda Castillo brings the various characters, sympathetic and not, to life in a way every reader will recognize, regardless of their own ethnicity.

You can read more about Linda Castillo at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Daniel Palmer’s latest novel, Stolen, opens with a terrifying premise.  Imagine getting the news that a loved one has been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer.  You are devastated, distraught, but you cling to the hope that the drug the doctor has prescribed will cure the disease.

Then you find out that your insurance company will not pay for the brand-name version of this drug; they will only pay for the generic drug.  You explain to the insurance agent that the doctor has told you that the generic drug is not available so that your loved one must take the brand-name one.  Sorry, says the agent, we won’t pay for that.  And the cost of the brand-name drug over the course of treatment will be three hundred thousand dollars.

This is the situation facing John and Ruby Bodine.  Verbilifide is the drug recommended to combat Ruby’s illness, and when John discovers that another insurance company would cover Verbilifide he devises a plan to get that drug.  He’s going to hack into that company’s files and take over the identity of one of its clients.  Then he’ll submit the appropriate forms as that client so that Ruby will get the necessary medication.

John has created a computer game called OneWorld.  He doesn’t charge people to play and makes his money by selling them virtual items that appear online.  While waiting for OneWorld to become a huge success, the couple is paying for Ruby’s schooling plus the usual expenses of housing, food, car insurance.  There’s barely enough money for that; money for Verbilifide simply isn’t there.

Using his computer skills, John creates a new life for himself and Ruby–new names, new apartment, new credit cards.  Ruby doesn’t like this plan, knows it’s dishonest, but as her illness starts taking over she doesn’t have the strength to fight for her point of view.  A few weeks pass, Verbilifide is working, and John and Ruby are now Elliot and Tanya Uretsky, submitting claims to “their” insurer, UniSol.

And then their phone rings.  Who could be calling them at their new, unlisted number; only UniSol has it.  When John picks up the phone, at first there doesn’t appear to be anyone at the other end.  But then a raspy voice begins to talk.  “My name is Elliot Uretsky, and I believe you stole my identity.”

We’ve all heard or read about identity theft.  Perhaps we know someone who was the victim of it, perhaps it even happened to you.  It’s a scary feeling, realizing that someone has tapped into your life, usually for the purpose of taking your money.  Although that isn’t John’s reason for “becoming” Elliot Uretsky, and his reason is a much more benign and understandable one, the reader recognizes that a crime has been committed here.  But when the “real” Elliot Uretsky appears on the scene, one’s sympathies shift entirely in John’s favor.  Mr. Uretsky is not a nice man.

Daniel Palmer has written a true page-turner, a thriller I promise you won’t be able to put down.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

April 13, 2013

Back in December I wrote about the first annual New England Book Fair’s Gala Mystery Night.

I live near the Book Fair, which is in Newton, MA.  The Fair has been under new ownership for the past couple of years, after having been owned by one family for decades.  The new owner, naturally, is interested in putting his own stamp on his business and has been offering presentations by authors for the past several months, something that had not been done before.

When I went to the Gala in December, I had the pleasure of meeting two writers about whom I had blogged:  Len Rosen, author of All Cry Chaos, and Steve Ulfelder, author of Purgatory Chasm and The Whole Lie.  While talking to Len Rosen, he introduced me to another writer, Daniel Palmer.  Daniel was extremely gracious and promised me an advanced reading copy when his latest novel was published.  Frankly, I wondered whether, when the book came out, he would remember his promise; after all, he didn’t really know me, and we had only spoken for a very few minutes.

But to my delight, in February Daniel sent me a copy of Stolen, a nail-biting thriller about stolen identity and its aftermath.  In addition to this About Marilyn column, I’ve written a review of Stolen, which will appear on my blog next week.

My thanks to Daniel Palmer for his kindness in sending me this mystery.  I enjoyed it immensely and feel certain you will too.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Marilyn

In case you haven’t met her already, allow me to introduce Flavia de Luce.  The third daughter of an impoverished British former army officer, she’s a delightful character who appeared fully formed in the first book of Alan Bradley’s series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  Now she’s back in Speaking from Among the Bones.

The de Luce family traces its roots back hundreds of years in England, but they have fallen on hard times.  The estate of Buckshaw, the ancestral home of Harriet de Luce, the girls’ late mother, is in arrears for back taxes that Colonel de Luce is unable to pay.  Harriet went missing, as the British expression goes, on a trek in the Himalayas shortly after Flavia was born twelve years ago.  Although Buckshaw is no longer the elegant country estate it once was, it’s the only home that Flavia and her two sisters, Daphne (Daffy) and Ophelia (Feely) have ever known, and the thought of having it taken away by Inland Revenue is casting a dark shadow over the family.

The village of Bishop’s Lacy, home to the de Luces, is preparing for the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of its patron holy man, St. Tancred.  Exactly why this should necessitate digging up his coffin and removing his bones is unclear, unless it is, as Daffy says to Flavia, to see if his body remains uncorrupted, if he has “the odor of sanctity.”  Whatever the reason, the Church of England authorities gave the vicar of St. Tancred permission to remove his coffin, but now they want to revoke that.   The vicar protests that plans have gone too far, but when the crypt is entered (and Flavia, of course, is present) to unearth the casket, the group finds the much more recent remains of the church’s organist, Chrispin Collicutt, who has been missing for several weeks.

Flavia, of course, wants to be in the midst of everything, reflecting that her past successes with local crimes should entitle her to assist the local police whether they want her help or not.  And her vast knowledge of poisons will come in handy, she is sure, in solving any and all crimes in the village, including that of the murder of Mr. Collicutt.  Astride her trusty bike, Gladys, there’s no stopping her.

Bishop’s Lacey is filled with fascinating characters.  There’s  the church’s vicar and his wife; Miss Tanty, a middle-aged member of the choir who suddenly fancies herself as a detective; Adam Sowerby, a friend of the colonel’s with a business card that identifies him as a horticulturist, flora-archaeologist, and investigator (the last under the somewhat misleading wording of “inquiries”); and the two remaining members of the once-grand Buckshaw staff:  Mrs. Mullet, cook and housekeeper; and Dogger, gardener and general handyman, formerly in the service with Colonel de Luce.

Alan Bradley has written the fifth novel in this delightful series with the same wit and verve as he did with the previous four.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Living near Boston, over the years I’ve followed the news about the art thefts from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with great interest.  Earlier this month the FBI announced that it knows the perpetrators of this crime but is unable to locate the thirteen paintings that were stolen in the middle of the night in March, 1990, paintings that are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.  Strange, but that’s the official line as of now.

In B. A. Shapiro’s thriller, The Art Forger, disgraced artist Claire Roth is approached and asked to make a copy of Edgar Degas’s After the Bath, one of the stolen paintings.  The man who brings Claire the painting, Aidan Markel, is the owner of a prestigious art gallery in Boston.  His plan is to sell the copy that Claire makes to a foreign buyer who has already agreed to purchase it.  Of course, the foreign buyer thinks that what he’s getting is the original, not a twenty-first-century forgery.

Aidan won’t tell Claire how he’s come into possession of the masterpiece, saying only that it’s a win-win situation and that “there are many layers” between the art thieves and the person from whom he received After the Bath.  He tells her that the buyer will be happy, Claire will receive $50,000 for her work, he himself will get his share of the purchase price, and then he will give the original back to the museum.  He never makes clear exactly how this last part will work, but he reassures Claire that there’s no danger for either of them.  And, a huge bonus for Claire, Aidan promises her a one-woman show at his gallery, Markel G.

The reason that Claire is in disgrace in the art world goes back three years before the novel opens.  She was in the midst of a clandestine relationship with her art professor, a well-regarded artist who had been unable to complete a commissioned painting for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Desperate to help Isaac Cullion overcome his mental block, Claire paints a work in his style as he looks on and protests, but when she’s finished he signs his name to it.  And when the MOMA curator sees the work, she pronounces it his best ever and arranges for it to hang in the museum’s show.  But, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and Claire is still feeling the repercussions of her action three years later.

B. A. Shapiro has written a thriller that is true to the name of the genre.  Even as we know Claire is making bad choices, we understand her reasons for doing so.  Part professional pride–could she actually produce a painting that would fool the experts as well as the buyer?  Part economic necessity–living in her art studio, her bed a mattress on the floor, her meals consisting mainly of take-out Thai and cold cereal–she’s behind on her student loans, her rent, and payment for the art supplies she needs to complete her current project.  The temptation is too much to resist.

The Art Forger is a terrific, compelling read, and knowing that the heist is still unsolved after all these years adds to the tension of the novel.  The characters are true-to-life, and their morality, or the lack of it, comes straight from today’s headlines.

You can read more about B. A. Shapiro at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

It can’t be easy to make a hired killer, an assassin, a sympathetic character to the reader.  But Lawrence Block has been doing it for more than twenty years.

Hit Me is a collection of several short stories following Keller, now known as Nicholas Edwards.  He and his wife Julia have relocated from New York to New Orleans with their toddler daughter Jenny, and Keller thought he was out of the killing business permanently.

In the first story he gets a call from Dot, the woman who gives Keller his assignments, asking about his interest in going to Dallas to eliminate a man.  Dot, like Keller, thought she had retired from the business, but when she reentered it she phoned Keller to find out if he too has had a change of heart.  It seems he has, as his formerly flourishing rehab business in the Crescent City has slowed considerably due to the economic downturn.  In addition, Keller has been planning on traveling to Dallas to attend a stamp collecting auction.  When Dot hears this she calls the coincidence “the hand of Providence.”  Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.

Hit Me takes Keller all over, from New Orleans to Dallas to New York City to an ocean liner in the Caribbean to Denver to Cheyenne and finally Buffalo.  It seems that the business of killing people is as remunerative as always, especially for a man who knows his work.

Of course, Keller’s victims are always unpleasant people, although it may be a stretch to say that they all need to be killed.  But a man has to do what a man has to do, doesn’t he?

In the third story in the book, “Keller at Sea,” Keller’s wife Julia becomes an accomplice in her husband’s line of work.  She has obviously suspected something about what he does when he’s away from home, and now it has become clear to her.  But as she tells him, “I know what you do, and I don’t entirely know how I feel about it, but I don’t seem to mind.  I honestly don’t.”  Keller obviously picked the right woman to marry.  And help him she does.

Lawrence Block is an incredibly prolific author.  Although he has written only four previous novels featuring Keller, he is the author of eighteen Matt Scudder novels, ten Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries, eight Evan Tanner books, four featuring Chip Harrison, plus stand-alone novels, short stories, books for writers, and a memoir.  And that’s not the complete list of his works.

I read in a recent article that Mr. Block is contemplating retiring from the writing profession.  Let’s hope he, like his protagonist Keller, has a change of heart.

Spending the day with a hit man may seem like a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure it is.  Lawrence Block’s writing grabs you and doesn’t let you go.  You certainly wouldn’t want to meet Keller on a professional basis, but in a book he’s fascinating.

You can find out more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Linwood Barclay has done it again, creating a fascinating novel that’s nearly impossible to put down.  Actually, Trust Your Eyes is impossible to put down, as is every other Barclay book I’ve read.

Ray Kilbride has returned home to upper New York State after the death of his father, in part to determine what’s best for his younger brother.  Thomas is a high-functioning schizophrenic, obsessed with mapping all the streets in the world; he’s convinced that there will be a catastrophe in which all maps will be destroyed.

When, not if, he believes that will happen, Thomas will be the only one in the world who has the knowledge that the maps had held.  He’s been “in contact” with the CIA and former President Bill Clinton and has assured them of his abilities and cooperation in this matter.  In order to concentrate on this, Thomas has hardly left his house in several years.  He leaves his room only to have three quick meals a day and then returns to continue his memorization project.

One day, while on the web’s Whirl360 site, Thomas sees what looks like a person’s head wrapped in a plastic bag.  For as long as he looks at the window where the head is, it doesn’t move.  Could he possibly be seeing a murder taking place?

In Linwood Barclay’s adept hands, this is the main thread of the mystery but not the only one.  Allison Fitch, a young woman working as a waitress in lower Manhattan, is having money troubles.  Her salary isn’t big enough to cover her part of the rent for the apartment she shares or for all the clothes she buys, so she’s always doing a little creative financing.  At first it’s innocent enough, if not very nice, as she spins a story to her mother in order to get her mother to send her a thousand dollars.  But it turns dangerous when she decides to turn to blackmail to get sufficient funds to finally pay all her debts.

And then there are the political figures, killers-for-hire, and FBI agents coming to the Kilbrides’ house to talk to Thomas about his frequent e-mails to the CIA.  If you think this won’t all hang together to make a fantastic thriller, you obviously don’t know Linwood Barclay.

The characters in Trust Your Eyes are totally believable, as is the plot.  Sometimes the most seemingly innocent or innocuous decisions have grave consequences.  If Ray Kilbride hadn’t come home to straighten out his father’s affairs and decide about his brother’s future, he wouldn’t have seen the Whirl360 web site and gone to Manhattan to investigate what his brother thought was a murder.  If Allison Fitch hadn’t turned the television on at a particular moment, the blackmail plot would never have entered her mind.  And if Nicole had won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics instead of the silver, she might not have become a professional assassin.

Linwood Barclay is a master of his craft.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Jack Swyteck is the attorney for the trial of the twenty-first century in James Grippando’s latest thriller, Blood Money.  The story, which is similar to a spectacular trial that was recently in the headlines, has twists that will keep the reader turning the pages of the novel faster and faster until the ending is reached.

Sydney Bennett is on trial for her life for the murder of her daughter Emma, two years old at the time of her disappearance.  As the prosecution tells it, Sydney liked life in the fast lane, and her young daughter was cramping her style.  After her daughter disappeared from their home, Sydney was photographed drinking and bar-hopping and apparently showing no sorrow.  Then, three years later, Emma’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the Everglades.

Although a time and even a cause of death were never discovered due to the length of time between the child’s disappearance and the discovery of her body, public opinion agrees that Sydney is guilty.  When the book opens, on the day the verdict is to be delivered, hundreds of protestors are outside the courthouse with signs demanding “Justice for Emma,” by which they mean the death penalty for Sydney.

But when the verdict is announced, virtually everyone is stunned–Not Guilty.  And then chaos ensues.

Leading the media frenzy surrounding the arrest and trial is Faith Corso, a former prosecutor and current personality on the BNN network.  Throughout the trial Faith has demonized Sydney, giving her the now-famous nickname of Shot Mom (for the whiskey shots she was photographed drinking after Emma’s disappearance).

It’s easy to hate Sydney, given the severity of the crime she’s accused of, her posturing in court, and her refusal to say anything more to her lawyer than that she’s innocent.  And when she realizes that she and Jack are not on the same page regarding her future–she sees herself giving interviews at one hundred thousand dollars per and perhaps being the subject of a television movie as well–they come to a parting of the ways.  His injunction that Sydney needs to keep a low profile seems to fall on deaf ears.

The picture gets even bleaker.  Jack has arranged for Sydney to leave the Miami-Dade Women’s Correction Center under cover of night, trying to avoid the large crowd that is camped in front of the prison.  Egged on by one of BNN’s reporters, the crowd is hostile and dangerous, waiting for Sydney’s release.  Shouting “no blood money” over and over, the people are whipping themselves into a fever when one of them believes she has spotted Sydney walking out the jail’s door.  The crowd surges over the woman and knocks her to the ground. But when the people are forcibly disbursed by the police, it’s discovered that the woman is not Sydney Bennett but a younger woman who looks much like her, and Sydney is nowhere to be seen.

Many of the novel’s most unpleasant characters, unfortunately, are totally believable.  Sydney, even years after her daughter’s death, expresses nothing that could charitably be called maternal instinct; her only thoughts are how best to promote herself and earn big money.  Her father is a bully who refuses to allow his wife to speak to Jack.  Faith Corso is a media star whose only interest appears to be the story, regardless of whether the story is factual or not.  And the head of the BNN network will literally stop at nothing to boost the ratings of his programs.

Blood Money is the tenth novel in James Grippando’s Jack Swyteck series.  You can read more about the author at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Hush Money/Hush Puppy–it’s the second word that makes all the difference.

Hush Puppy is the name of a champion horse belonging to Sydney Everett, a rich but crude widow who owns horses but doesn’t ride them. When Jack MacTaggart, a recent addition to the very white-shoe Los Angeles law firm of Henley & Hargrove, is asked to take over the insurance case involving the death of Mrs. Everett’s horse, Hush Puppy, he asks, “Why me?  I don’t know a fetlock from a half nelson.”  The reason is that the firm’s attorney who usually handles Mrs. Everett’s business is out of the country, so Jack has to hoof it over (forgive the pun) to the Fielding Riding Club to get the story.

Sydney Everett is the personification of the gauche, nouveau riche trophy wife/widow who is on the prowl for a replacement for her late husband.  Avoiding Sydney’s obvious interest in him, Jack learns from the riding club’s veterinarian, George Wells, that Hush Puppy died of cardiac failure of an unknown cause; it is later discovered that the cause of the heart failure is a virus that poisoned the animal.

Jack is working on another case as well.  His client, a low-income working man named Victor Tazerian, has leukemia that is currently in remission.   A proven treatment has been denied by Victor’s insurance carrier on the grounds that Victor is healthy at the moment. However, when (and it’s a when, not an if) his cancer returns, the treatment will not work.  Jack’s job is to convince the insurance company to pay for the treatment when Victor is healthy so it can be available when he gets ill again.  So far, the venerable Hartford Allied Insurance Company has not agreed to do this.  But Jack has always enjoyed a good fight.

The characters in Hush Money are terrific.  Jack is street-wise, not exactly a perfect fit for his law firm. The stable master he meets at the Fielding Riding Club, Tara Flynn, is an attractive, outgoing young woman; she’s not shy about telling Jack her opinion of everyone in the club, her bosses included.  Russ Dinsmoor, Jack’s mentor and a highly respected attorney in the California legal community, is uneasy about Jack’s deep research into Hush Puppy’s death.  Sydney Everett, Jack’s client, has a secret in her past that is impacting everything about the case.  And the senior partner in Jack’s firm, Morris Henley, and his son Jared are unlikeable in the extreme.  The former is an overbearing, arrogant man who thinks his every word must be obeyed, while the latter much prefers roaming the world to doing actual work at the law firm.

Chuck Greaves was an attorney in Los Angeles for twenty-five years, and the novel is filled with fascinating pieces of legal lore.  He obviously knows the ins-and-outs of the court system, and his writing makes it all accessible to his readers.  And his character Jack MacTaggart is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.